I Lost My Hair To Covid; What I’m Doing About it Now

Shocking and traumatizing. This is how I describe November 2021 through February 2022. Before I tell you the story of losing my hair to covid I ask that you not judge me for I’ve learned that you truly cannot fully comprehend what a person is going through unless you walk that journey out in their shoes. 

Learning to live with new hair and a new sense of peace at age 58. Taken on my front porch in Montana in March 2022.

Covid is causing people to lose their hair—anywhere from 60 to 95 percent loss. As I was living out this traumatic scenario late last year, I learned that I was one of the first waves of people across the globe to experience this phenomenon previously unknown to man. I’ve engaged in a lot of firsts in my life, but this is one blue ribbon I gladly would have passed over. 

I contracted covid in August 2021 and by Halloween the frightful ordeal began to unfold. More than normal strands of hair falling out every time I brushed or showered. At first, I had no idea what was going on. The focus of my days, starting in early October after turning a corner from the long six-week haul of covid, was spent regaining strength and stamina that covid pneumonia stole from me. But when the shedding crept to scary levels, I knew something was not right and began to search for answers. (I’m purposefully not capitalizing the word covid as this deadly bioweapon does not deserve the status that comes with capitalization of a word.)

The long and short of it is this: I’ve enjoyed bra-length or longer hair for nearly 40 years. While I endured some thinning of my once thick Italian hair during my perimenopause years, I maintained length figuring if volume was vanishing, a measurable mane down my back would give the illusion of abundance. And hair has always been my thing. As a young girl, I dreamed of having a ponytail as long and beautiful as Rapunzel’s so Prince Charming could climb up it for a flirt through the casement. When I was older, I fantasized about being a hair model.

My last best hair day a few months before I got covid. This is how long and lush it was at age 57. Photo taken with my husband, Norm.

When my mom decided to get me my first teenager hair cut at age 13 (likely so she no longer would have to painstakingly brush out the rat’s nest every few days that would develop at my nape), the Dorothy Hamill short bob was all the rage. I remember sulking out of the salon with Mother doing her best to encourage me that I’d eventually grow to like the trendy do made famous by the gold medal Olympic figure skater. “We’ll see,” I muttered under my breath. My lack of enthusiasm was based solely on a genetic trait that was a source of childhood embarrassment: a Darwin’s Point. A dominant gene caused thickening of cartilage on the top of my left ear. The 1900’s evolutionist Charles Darwin tried to make a connection that this point on the ear proved we descended from monkeys, some of which sport pointy ears. Somehow Darwin’s name got attached to this genetic trait that 50 percent of the population possess. Young me feared friends would discover my protruding helix and call me out with names like Mr. Spock from Star Trek. Now with little means to cover this ugly attribute, I vowed never to have short hair again.

Posing for my third grade school photo is the first time I had a sense of my long and growing hair and enjoyed pushing it forward to frame my face. By seventh grade, at age 13, my hair was cut short.

The rest of my teenage years were focused on growing out my hair. By age 26 my brunette tress was below the middle of my back. People complimented me all the time, and I gladly received the nice words. Surprisingly, I never spent a lot of time on styling. God blessed me with easy-to-manage healthy hair that required zero product to make it do what I wanted.

Showing off my natural dark brunette hair at age 27, the longest it ever was, in a photo shoot for a motorcycle coffee table book of which I was asked to be a part.

I enjoyed everything about having long locks full of body throughout my 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. In my mid-30s, I cut it shorter and started putting in golden highlights, which at the time was just starting to become a thing. The lighter strands added sparkle to my on-camera presence at my new job as a motorcycle reporter for the burgeoning cable network Speedvision. As time progressed, blonde dominated my born-brown crown, but that was fine because I felt the brighter hue kept now-50-something-me looking youthful. So, when I lost nearly all this beautiful bounty, you can imagine how traumatizing it was to me. Or maybe you can’t imagine. I’m guessing you can’t. Most couldn’t.

 My Hair Timeline

My 30s: By age 34, I cut my hair shorter and put in golden highlights, which you can see here in this publicity photo for my television work.

My 40s: Who takes photos of the back of their hair?! Only women who love their hair and know they’re having a great hair day they don’t want to forget. Age 47.

My 50s: Another great hair day! With my husband at my cousin’s wedding three years ago at age 55. Hopefully, with these timeline of photos, you get my point.

Trying to Help
Several people in my life, while trying to understand and be sympathetic, unknowingly tinged their words of support with, “It’s just hair. It will grow back.” Quite frankly, at that point I didn’t know if it would grow back. There is no blueprint for covid hair loss like there is for chemotherapy, alopecia, or post-partum hair loss. Stories in the media about covid hair shedding were just beginning to surface, and this seasoned journalist could read between the lines. The quoted doctors were grasping at straws to come up with answers to this unknown abnormality. They diagnosed it as Telogen effluvium, excessive shedding that happens after a sudden shock to the body. OK, that kind of makes sense, but for me, a veteran writer, I’m leaving the doctors’ quotes out of my story. I find that piecing together facts from people experiencing this is far more verifiable than doctors trying to give me their best medical guess on what’s going on. Just like covid. No one really knows.

And the stories of strangers were my saving grace. God led me to not one but three covid hair loss support groups on social media. There, I learned not only facts but received encouragement and love from the thousands suffering through this life altering tragedy. Only those going through the great shed could comprehend the level of anxiety, anger, and angst agitating our souls. If hair is not important to you, then you may not be able to relate to this article. 

Screenshot of one of the three support groups I was part of on Facebook.

(Side note: My previous column explained about my breakup with social media. I will clarify that I still maintain a Facebook account solely to manage the “Women Who Ski” group that I founded in 2015, as well as for managing the business pages of my husband’s two companies. Thank goodness I was there to find these support groups.)

My Therapy
I ate up hours each day devouring other people’s stories, oftentimes weeping at the level of loss greater than mine. The desperation and fear from those going through this horrible situation was palpable. Some women (it was mostly females experiencing covid hair loss) would share gruesome photos of gigantic gobs of hair after taking a shower. I say gruesome because that much hair is supposed to be on one’s head, not strewn across a shower wall.

Photos used with permission.

Here’s one day of hair loss for Anna.

Here is Christi’s hair loss in one week with no washing.

Here’s Nathalie’s one week of hair loss.

With each passing day, I could barely catch my breath not knowing how long the shed would last and if I would have any hair left. The amount of hair that would fall out during showering was the most agonizing part of our stories. I pushed my wash days to once a week to delay the inevitable shower scare. Several times I was so distraught I fell to my knees in the shower in weakness crying out to God, “Why? Why? Why!?” I felt like such a victim, an emotion so foreign to me. I cried often at the unknowns of it all. Some women were saving their hair in baggies, divided up by day to record the loss. No way was I going to track the carnage this way. I shoved the clumps to the bottom of the bathroom waste basket so I didn’t have to see them. No photos for me. Sleep was my only escape from the misery. I thank the women in the support groups who allowed me to share their pictures here.

Valerie’s hair shedding is so dramatic you can see a lot of her scalp.

Many of us in the groups were Godly women posting faith-filled words of hope to encourage the thousands of others of all ages who were somewhere along the journey of the great shed. From ages 12 to 84, we fought to keep each other’s spirits up when the going got tough. (Yes, age 12! Several Moms shared the shocking covid hair loss their teenage daughters were suffering through.) It’s extremely difficult to stay positive when your hair is all over clothes, on the floor, and in your food. One woman organized a Zoom meeting so we could pray together. I hopped on and the prayers buoyed me for another 24 hours.

I’m grateful to the ladies who stuck with the group after their shedding stopped and new hair began to emerge. They comforted the rest of us citing timelines and expectations on regrowth. It seemed the average shed lasted 10 to 12 weeks, though some shockingly stretched to nine months. Some poor souls had barely any hair left. At 75 to 80 percent loss over 12 weeks, I was one of the fortunate ones.

Desperate to Find a Solution
Despite comments debunking regrowth shampoos, supplements, and serums I plunked down several hundred dollars on all of it desperately trying to save strands. In the end, nothing worked to stop the fall-out. I remember during the height of my covid calamity curiously questioning why my hair stopped growing. At five weeks in from my last dye job, I most certainly should be showing gray roots by now. I later learned my hair went into a resting phase—my body’s way of conserving vital energy and redirecting it to the organs that needed it the most, my lungs and heart. Sorry hair. You’re not gettin’ the goods. The nourishing blood flow that fed follicles daily diminished rendering them dead. A strand of hair, once it stops growing, doesn’t start up again. A blade of green grass whose soil has been robbed of vital nutrients dies off to make way for new grass once the soil is replenished.

Based on unofficial polls conducted in those support groups there was no rhyme or reason to what caused some to lose hair after covid and others to not lose hair. Some women had fevers and were hospitalized like me; others were not. Some had very low oxygen saturation levels like me, others did it. Some received the “injection” while others did not, like me. One woman told us she lost her hair and never even had covid. She just got the jab. Go figure!

By the first week in January, my shedding slowed. I could almost start to breathe again. But I was shell shocked. I felt like I’d been in a war, a war with my body. My long, luscious locks were gone. In mid-December, during the worst of it, my hair stylist advised cutting it shoulder length to minimize any more emotional damage. What remained were stringy strands so fine that you could see light from a window behind me. My crown was so sparse, my scalp froze when I stepped out into the winter air. 

First photo of my post-covid short hair in mid-December.  

Still losing hair in early January with my scalp now exposed from the drastic loss of coverage.

More Than Just Hair Loss
By the end of December though, my confidence was shot. My mentoring activities came to a screeching halt. The enemy was having a field day with me. Arrows were getting through, and I had not one ounce of strength to put on any armor. I wrestled with thoughts like, “Well I shouldn’t care so much about my hair, should I?” to “Well, what does God say about hair?” I know God thinks highly of hair because Jesus tells us in Luke 12:7 that God knows the number of hairs on our head. I also know from John 10:10 that it’s Satan who steals, kills, and destroys, not God. So, what exactly was going on here?

I was so sad, too. I’d never felt this sad in my life. To make matters worse, I was struggling with long haul covid symptoms of shortness of breath, foggy brain, and fatigue. And the migraines I’d battled for 14 years doubled in intensity and frequency. All this was heaped on top of a rough 2021. Both my father and father-in-law passed away from cancer. Friends succumbed to covid. And the world as I knew it was falling apart. Dare I admit, I slipped into a deep slump.

I spent more time in prayer asking God the hard questions. I learned that attacks come from the enemy to thwart us during our greatest seasons of victory. And the intensity heats up when we’re close to breakthrough. It’s almost like some sort of test of our spiritual mettle. I had just come off two years serving my extended family in new ways, and many people were finding new levels of freedom in Christ through my discipling time with them. I was also spending two hours every Tuesday with four other women praying together—lifting up our families, our community, our country, and the issues of the day. But now, with my physical reserves depleted due to the bioweapon virus, and my mental fortitude zapped because of hair loss, my well was completely dry.

I went to God for replenishment. The week between Christmas and New Year’s I felt him nudging me to engage in a 40-day news and negativity fast. This meant turning off my cell phone so I would not be distracted by headlines that caught my eye throughout the day, even if they were from the conservative truth-seeking platforms I followed. This also meant fasting from loved ones’ texts that included prayer chains, life news, and random requests. I simply couldn’t focus on any of that anymore.  

During the following weeks, my soul moved into mourning. My heart broke for what was—joyful, vibrant long-haired Genevieve who used to enjoy sowing into friends and family. I could barely encourage myself, let alone anyone else. I ached for simpler times. Letters from Grandma in the mailbox; three simple TV stations; phones on the wall. During these weeks, God took me deep to uncover unhealed soul wounds. The hair was just the tipping point.

I kept hearing him say, “Come to me, Genevieve, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28.) I also heard loud and clearly “Trust in me with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge me, Genevieve, and I shall direct your path.” (Proverbs 3:5-6). Hmmm. Lean not on my own understanding. OK God, tell me what’s going on because my mind is a jumbled mess.

I was desperate for daily encouragement so I wrote God’s words to me on my bathroom mirror. (Psalms 34:5, Isaiah 60:5, the book of James and 1 Peter)

Knowing health and wellness hold high value in my life, the Lord gave me a lifeline by leading me to a spike protein detox program to rid my body of the demonic virus that tried to take me down. It worked as my body was delivered from the insidious inflammation. Regaining physical strength buttressed me. My inner self, however, was slower to heal.

While the Lord and I were working through my soul wounds, Miss Fix-It Me—bolstered by the prayers of my spiritual family—sought a solution so I could venture out without sporting cotton candy hair. I call it that because the texture and body resemble that of cotton candy. Several women in the covid hair groups showed off wigs they bought to hide the loss. Beautiful blonde-haired Bobbi Gearhart caught my attention. I “followed” her over to a wig support group she was part of on Facebook.

This 61-year-old married mother of 10 contracted covid the same day I did, Friday the 13th of August 2021. Our stories are similar: several trips to the emergency room; dangerously low blood oxygen saturation levels; and later realizing we were closer to death’s door than we knew. Like me, her hair loss began a few weeks after she started feeling better. “I would run my hand through my hair and I’d get a big pile of hair,” Bobbi recalls. “At first, I was in shock. I didn’t have the reality of what was going on.” She continues, “While I thought, ‘this is really crazy,’ it was OK. I’m so lucky to be alive.”

Bobbie Gearhart showing off her nearly 80 percent hair loss from covid.

She too was blessed with a full head of long locks, and at her age, knew it was a gift. “I’m not vain, but I was proud of my hair as it was very thick.” By the end of December, she says she lost up to 80 percent of her hair. “At first it was very difficult. I told my husband I look hideous. If you look at my face, I guess I look the same, but it’s aged me. I look ragged. I’m not put together anymore. Like I said, I’m not a vain person, but I am someone who wants to look put together.” Hearing her explain it this way helped me understand my desire to have nice hair. I’ve always been one who appreciates that “put together” look.

My time interviewing Bobbi on the phone was cathartic knowing she wrestled with similar feelings. But as a schoolteacher in her hometown of Brunswick, Georgia, Bobbi had to face a room full of children every day, so moving from sadness to solutions quickly was a priority. She now owns six blond wigs she wears in rotation. “I was allowed to be sad that my hair was gone. I was allowed to be aggravated that I didn’t have hair. But while it was a bad thing, I chose to look at the glass half full, not half empty.”

Bobbi Gearhart before covid, and now with a wig. She's having fun wearing wigs while her hair grows back.

I admire Bobbi’s resiliency. It’s going in my war chest, a piece of armor I’m using to shield me from attacks of self-doubt while I work to regain my confidence. As I step back into the world in one of the fun new wigs I now own, the Lord is pruning branches that bore no fruit. My hair is growing back, by the way.

My hair today. It’s growing back strongly at the crown. It will be several years before it’s shoulder length with full volume. I’m not coloring it so it can grow out healthy without chemicals.

Wig experts say your first wig should resemble your bio hair to lessen the shock of wearing fake hair. This is my first wig in a style and color close to my own hair. Before I ever went out in public, I did a self-portrait photo shoot to help me feel comfortable wearing it.

I’m slowing embracing my journey into wigs. My thinking is, if I can’t have my own beautiful hair, then why not have fun with styles and colors I never would have done with my own hair, that being a redhead, and wearing a pixie cut.

God promises in Psalms 91 to deliver us from “the snare of the fowler,” that is, something that traps us. I’m determined to not let this march down “grief road” trap me any longer and instead look for how God plans to work it altogether for good, as he promises in Romans 8:28. I’m regaining energy to step back on the battlefield, but at this point I’ll admit I’m gun shy to regain my former position on the front lines. I know that resiliency will return. I was born for such a time as this. There are many souls that need to experience the freedom that comes from living a life knowing truth, that is Jesus. The promises of the son of the living God are the only words that combat the lies the world and others will tell you about yourself. I don’t know about you, but I sure do want to live free from the ugliness that permeates our souls as a result of living in this broken world. Jesus is the only one who can free us.

I will close with something profound. As I was sitting on my front porch last year on a warm early September evening convalescing from covid with a cannula poking up each nostril, I heard the Lord speak very clearly into my spirit. “From here on out, your life will forever be defined by ‘before covid and after covid.’” I had no idea what he was talking about. My mind reasoned that he might be referring to the challenges my body would face since health is so important to me. Never in my life would I have imagined the challenge God was hinting to was hair loss. The awful covid hair shed will forever be a defining moment in my life. How did I steward this season, and what are the everyday miracles through it all? Processing it out through the writing of this article is one step of good stewardship, and I’d say an everyday miracle in itself.

One lady in the wig support group commented on this photo with the word “fierce.” That stuck with me. I’ll run with it.

I share my story so it encourages you to seek out truth, that is, Jesus, the only one who can soothe your soul and give you true rest from the suffering you face in this life. I love you. Reach out to me privately if you need help or prayer. And please leave a comment below.

Resources:
Spike protein detox program I did:
https://worldcouncilforhealth.org/resources/spike-protein-detox-guide/

Where I buy wigs:
WigStudio1.com

Never miss a new Everyday Miracles column from me:
https://www.genevieveschmitt.com/newsletter-sign-up